1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a recorded medium feeding device that feeds a recorded medium to a recording unit that carries out recording on the recorded medium and a recording apparatus having the same.
2. Related Art
A feeding roller that feeds paper in the paper feeding device is generally provided at a position deviated toward the side of a reference position (the single-digit side) in the direction of paper width in order to accommodate paper in small sizes. Therefore, when feeding paper in a large size, the feed roller is positioned so as to be deviated toward the single-digit side with respect to the widthwise center position of the paper. However, the curved posture of the paper at a position of the feed roller is different from the curved posture at a position apart from the feed roller, and hence paper skew is resulted. Therefore, in the paper feeding device disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 3775492, an “auxiliary roller” having substantially the same shape as the feed roller when viewing the paper feed path from the side is provided so that the curved posture of paper is uniformized in the direction of paper width.
There is a paper-feeding device of a type which feeds paper from the paper-feed cassette by a pickup roller invert the paper by an intermediate roller provided on the downstream side of the pickup roller and feeds the inverted paper to the recording unit. In the paper feeding device of this type, the pickup roller is provided at a position deviated to the side of the reference position (the single-digit side) in the direction of paper width for accommodating paper in smaller sizes. Therefore, in the paper feeding device in this manner, means for constraining the curved posture of the paper to be uniform in the direction of paper width is preferable in the same manner as described above.
In the paper feeding device of this type, separating means for separating paper on the downstream side of the pickup roller is provided. The separating means separates a piece of paper to be fed and subsequent pieces of paper by forming a nip point between the feed roller and the retard roller.
Since the separating means provides a paper-passage load to the paper, the pickup roller and the separating means are provided at substantially the same position in the direction of paper width. However, the paper to be fed receives the paper-passage load from the separating means, the speed of paper when passing through the separating means is lower than the paper feeding speed by the pickup roller, and hence the paper tends to be skewed between the pickup roller and the separating means as a result.
In other words, in the direction of paper width, the length of the paper path at the position of the pickup roller and the separating means in the direction of paper width is longer than the length of the paper path at a position apart from the pickup roller and the separating means, which may cause the paper skew. Therefore, in the paper feeding device of this type, it is not possible to prevent the paper skew only by providing the “auxiliary roller” which has substantially the same shape as the paper feeding roller when viewing the paper feeding path from the side as described in Japanese Patent No. 3775492.